


you're a crumbling star, my endless blue

by NoOneFrUkingCares



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Author Is Sleep Deprived, Junmyeon's Birthday Week 2020, M/M, MerMay, Ocean, Ocean vs sea, Sea, Stars, Water, merman, this is kinda a character study, why do I always end up lowkey writing character studies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:21:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24231277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoOneFrUkingCares/pseuds/NoOneFrUkingCares
Summary: Come down to the ocean, where the waves singHere where the waters are white, you’ll be welcomed and lovedCome down to the sea, where the tides playHere where the waters are black, you’ll join the rest of us
Relationships: Kim Junmyeon | Suho/Wu Yi Fan | Kris
Comments: 3
Kudos: 26
Collections: Challenge #2 — Merfolk





	you're a crumbling star, my endless blue

**Author's Note:**

> This started as me wanting to shower Jun in love, or like write myself some quality and tooth-rottingly sweet Krisho fluff, but along the way it turned into a love letter to the sea, but like I was also listening to Self-Portrait (the whole album), and my favorite from it is Starry Night so there's a bit of a love letter to the stars. 
> 
> And so, the title is a mashup of lyrics from O2 and Starry Night, brownie points if you know from where in the songs I'm pulling from.
> 
> Anyways, happy (belated?) birthday to Junmyeon, wherever he is now. I wish him luck in whatever he's doing right now, which is totally like resting in his bed at home and not like anywhere else for any particular South Korean government-mandated activity, ahaha.

On a fresh, crisp spring day, the ocean calls. It calls with the seagulls that squawk overhead, the salt that rushes from the sea, and the tantalising unspoken wish on the air. “Come,” it says, “come down to the ocean.”

And Junmyeon is hopeless but to obey.

On clouded spring days that still have a slight crunch, hidden in waters that move barely fast enough to keep from freezing and footsteps that crush metaphorical ice crystals, the sea dances. It jumps and bounces around the jagged rocks that barely keep from being pulled under, snarling and snapping playfully at the toys it has long claimed.

Junmyeon makes his way over the stones, experience telling him which ones are stable for his presence, and which would send him down for a merciless dunk. He doesn’t mind having to leap from one to another, miniature islands too small to be considered so, even as his boots squish with the water that lapped over them, and every other step he takes slips. He jumps mere breaths, after all, not meters from the top of the cliff that borders his back.

If Junmyeon was a braver person, or perhaps more suicidal, he would jump into the waves. Strip off the layers that he still needs to face such a chill in the mornings and evenings when he can sneak down to the tides and waves, and splash into the waters, swim until he can’t and the water then destroys him.

Junmyeon is intimately acquainted with these waters, which is why he doesn’t dare to ever underestimate them. And because, or maybe, despite, that, he still loves them anyways.

Either way, the waters would never hurt him these days.

Junmyeon slips over the last two rocks, finally landing properly on the isolated boulder he seeks. The splashing shrieks louder here, as he climbs over the bulge, and disappears from sight.

Well, not completely disappears from sight. Only from those on land. Looking in from the sea, you’ll see Junmyeon standing there, a small figure awash in the blacks of the waves and the sky.

He arrives early for once, and so he sits down on the smooth, cold rock, to look out to sea. The sea looks back at him as equally as it does not, and asks for Junmyeon to join it. Junmyeon does not take the offer today, because he has a better one. He may take it one day, or he may never take it, but the sea never stops offering.

Junmyeon hears him before he sees him, a splash that is too loud for the waves themselves, a knock of courtesy just as much as it is a warning. No human besides him would properly recognise it, but Junmyeon knows the sound, and in spite of how the wind tries to steal it from his face, he smiles.

Waters part around the streamline body, and Junmyeon’s eyes become drawn to the figure that cuts through, bleeding into the darkness of the waves with the flow of his hair. It’s magic, how he moves, as much as it isn’t, a natural part of life, as magical as Junmyeon’s own breathing tends to be. An upper body erupts from the tides that try to pull it back in, but Junmyeon doesn’t shy away from the water that splashes at him, nor the way that those eyes, twinkling of the stars that have the luck to fall into the ocean, turn towards him, shining at him with the brilliance that only space is made of. They are eyes that do not belong trapped on Earth, and so they were given to one who is free to swim the oceans but not the galaxy.

“You’re early.” Yifan remarks, voice a wave that crashes into a shore.

“You could have the courtesy to not sound so surprised.” Junmyeon replies, not offering help in the pettiest payback as Yifan drags himself out from the waters, pulling up his tail languidly to be able to rest on the same rock that Junmyeon waits on.

“The stars didn’t tell me such a momentous thing could happen.” Yifan counters. Junmyeon doesn’t bother pointing out that with all the clouds, no one can see any stars anyways.

Yifan’s arms reach for Junmyeon even as his voice dries up with the sentence. Junmyeon moves with him, a dance of unison as Junmyeon’s fingers wet with salt and the sea, tangle in Yifan’s hair, faces far too close but also too far.

Their lips connect and meld together, and Junmyeon drowns when each breath he takes is salt and sweet and fluid and cold, and when he kisses not only Yifan but the ocean that bore him, and the possibility of life and death and the decisions he makes each time he chooses not to listen to the sea.

Yifan pulls away first, air always too harsh on his brittle lungs meant for softened water, always needing to catch his breath, needing not air but air all the same. And when his eyes close to lean into Junmyeon and rest, Junmyeon is allowed to look at him, separate him from the waters he lives in, and understand that he’ll always look at Yifan in a sort of awestruck and understanding way he never afforded the waves, because Yifan was built for the stars and Junmyeon was built for the sea. Instead, Yifan landed in the ocean, a fallen star, and Junmyeon stays trapped on land, waves crashing around his feet.

When Yifan opens his eyes again, none of that matters anymore, because as they twinkle, Junmyeon knows that he belongs nowhere else besides being trapped under that gaze.

I’m in love with you, Junmyeon thinks, heart pumping in time with Yifan’s, his hand resting gently on the curve of Yifan’s bent neck.

And when Yifan smiles, Junmyeon understands that he thinks exactly the same.

~~~~~~~

_Come down to the deep blue, where fallen stars live  
They smile, and love you too_

**Author's Note:**

> Psst spare a comment for the needy?


End file.
